Restaurants We Love: Italian Kitchen in Ardsley

Jan. 12, 2013

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The menu is small, with grilled pizza bread, pastas and around a dozen entrees. / Xavier Mascareńas/The Journal News

If You Go

Italian Kitchen, 698 Saw Mill River Road, Ardsley, 914- 693-5400, www.ik-ny.com. Hours: Open for lunch, 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday; dinner, 5:30-10:30 p.m Monday, Wednesday, Thursday; 5:30 to 10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 5:30-9 p.m. Sunday. Dinner for two (excluding tax, tip, alcohol) $85 Good to know: Street parking and a municipal lot across the street. The front of the restaurant is a very tight space and provides no room to wait for a table, so reservations are a great idea.

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Expectations can do you in sometimes. Take Shea Gallante. My food-crazed family is a fan of this all-star chef, especially considering his big win on the Food Network’s “Iron Chef America.” The buzz on his newly opened restaurant in Ardsley, Italian Kitchen, has been deafening, so when we finally were able to get it all together and get a table — well, maybe we were expecting too much.

Gallante, who lives in Ardsley, took over the space occupied by Giuseppi’s, a long-time Italian restaurant on Saw Mill River Road, also known as Route 9A. It’s adorable. And, make no mistake, the food, under the direction of chef Paul Mancebo, is really, really good.

The front dining room is long, low lit and narrow, the kind of space that makes you lean in and admire the food on your fellow diners’ plates as you make your way to the larger, back dining room, which has rustic barn-wood paneling, plain tables and large old-time, blown-up photos of people enjoying and preparing food.

What we saw, on our short trip, looked promising: artfully arranged dishes of scallops, lovely composed salads, and pizza hot off the grill, served on on oblong wooden boards.

But somehow given all the hoopla over the restaurant and Gallante’s celebrity cred — he also owns Ciano in Manhattan — we were initially disappointed with the choices on the paper-placemat menu: fried calamari, Buffalo mozzarella, even arancini, traditional Italian fried-rice balls that my sister makes all the time.

Instead, we went for the conversation starters. An antipasto offering of caramelized new potatoes with Meyer lemon and pecorino made the list mostly because we were curious about its execution. What we got were flavorful, delightfully moist potatoes that yielded to the slightest pressure from the fork. Very surprising, and not what we expected. Well. Lesson learned.

Rainbow beets, too, were surprising. Served with grated pistachios and Stracchino cheese, one mouthful provided a world of different tastes and textures.

And we had to have a pizza: Gallante’s version is billed as grilled pizza bread, but no matter, it was thin and delicious, topped with speck, arugula and fresh Robiola cheese.

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There were eight entrees on the menu the night we were in, one chicken dish, several fish, pork, a steak and a vegan option of Tuscan beans, winter vegetables and herbs, but Gallante changes things up, as noted on the restaurant’s website, when different things become available in the market.

Caramelized diver scallops were served on a neat bit of sweet onion, squash mostarda, Brussels sprouts and hazelnuts, which provided layer upon subtle — and not so subtle — layer of flavors and textures, a little salty, sweet, crunchy; you name it.

Our favorite was cavatelli with a Bolognese bianco; yes, a white sauce, not the traditional red. Loaded with fatty, cheese-y, meaty flavor, it was another layered experience, with different taste notes.

Pastas are all homemade and nearly every one was cause for discussion, especially because, as my son pointed out, Gallante’s “Iron Chef” challenge secret ingredient was pasta. What exactly is cortecce, we wondered? Shaped like an open pea pod, it’s a great shape for capturing a sauce made with octopus, lardo and Calabria peppers. Strozzapreti, another interesting shape, long and narrow (it means “priest-strangler” in Italian), came baked with broccoli rabe and sausage. Siamese Ravioli are what they would seem, two different pockets of filling in the same ravioli, this case mascarpone and Hubbard squash.

There were four desserts, plus housemade sorbetto and gelato, but the night we were in, they were out of two, the Cioccolato, a chocolate mousse cake with ganache, sea salt and Nutella gelato (we were looking forward to that, too, darn!) and an apple-plum tart. But we were not disappointed with the runners-up, a velvety vanilla panna cotta with a wild blueberry compote and a chocolate bread pudding served with vanilla gelato.

Over dessert, we had a fruitful discussion about our “Iron Chef” meal, and came to the conclusion that, yes, indeed, we would like to give Gallante’s menu another try. Now that the buzz has died down a bit, we think our next meal will exceed our expectations.